


A Christmas Challenge

by Skiewrites



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, Christmas, Crushes, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, High School AU, Hints of Underaged Drinking, M/M, Multi, Pining, Secret Santa, halloween party, oblivious Pidge, scheming Allura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 13:55:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17163206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skiewrites/pseuds/Skiewrites
Summary: When Lance suggested that they do a Secret Santa, Pidge wasn't fully convinced. Afterall, Christmas was well overrated and there were better things that she could be doing.But then, Lance made it a challenge. Whoever brought in the better gift for their giftee would win a favour from the other person, and a Holt never backs down from a challenge like that.





	A Christmas Challenge

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a gift to aareysollen on tumblr. Merry Christmas, and I hope that you enjoy this fic!

 

In Pidge’s, rather unpopular opinion, Christmas was overrated. 

That, of course, was not to say that it was a bad holiday. It was nice that they got a couple of weeks off school and it did give a good excuse to get drunk, but then, family members that haven’t been seen since last Christmas come over and just insist in talking to her, which meant that she had to come downstairs without her laptop, be interrogated for an hour or two, before being allowed to hide away in the safely of her room again. Then there was the fact that everyone seemed far too eager for the holiday, from the counting down to the early decorations to even the Christmas jumpers. 

And, out of everyone that she knew, Lance McClain was the worst offender. 

When November 1st came, he walked right into school humming carols and expressing his delight for the holiday, something that caused everyone in the group to go wide eyed at their friend. 

“Lance, you do remember that Thanksgiving is before Christmas, right?” Hunk had asked at the time. Lance, it seemed, forgot that it was even a holiday, which made sense since he never really celebrate it, his family came over from Cuba a couple of years ago, and there were still a couple of things that made the boy confused about the great wonderful country of USA. 

Since then, things had slowly began to get out of hand when it came to the holiday season. It started off with the carols, and then came the awful Christmas jokes, the ugly Christmas jumpers before finally:

“Hey! We should do a Secret Santa!” Pidge looked up from her laptop with a small frown on her face. The cafe where they hung out after school, Altea’s Teashop, was quite quiet that day, so Lance’s voice carried and a couple of other patrons looked up at the noise before looking back down at their phones or newspapers. His excalimation had gained the attention from everyone at their crowded table, Allura an Romelle stopped their hushed flirting, Hunk and Keith stopped pretending to not be looking at each other, Shiro had stopped explaining to Adam and the rest of the table (if they were listening, which was unlikely) what had happened with Mr. Iverson in P.E that day. 

“What? Why?” Pidge asked, scrunching her nose up at the idea. It was December 1st. They didn’t need to be talking about Christmas for at least another week. 

“A Secret Santa’s where everyone’s name gets up into a hat and everyone gets one name, and they have to buy them a present, but in secret,” Hunk explained, “I think it would be a great idea Lance.” Lance smiled at the praise from his best friend, but Pidge still frowned, her laptop having gone into standby due to the lack of activity. 

“Yeah, I get that bit, I just don’t know why we’re doing it so early,” Pidge replied, and Lance smiled warmly at her. 

“Well, you’re going to need time to find that all important gift Pidgeotto,” Lance explained, to which Pidge huffed at. 

“I know all of you well enough to get you a gift well before the end of term, let alone Christmas,” Pidge boasted. Sure, it was a slight exaggeration. Both Romelle and Adam were new to the group, so she would be stuck if she got them. However, she was fairly certain that if she got anyone else, she would be able to get them something. Afterall, they all had been friends for years at this point. 

“Is that so?” Lance asked, clearly plotting something behind those warm brown eyes, “How about you and me have to bring something in for our giftees on the last day of term. Than, they both can decided who gave the better gift,” Lance proposed. 

“And what does the winner get if they win?” Pidge asked, their fingers beginning to tap the top of the table as if she was typing. 

“How about a favour?” 

“Deal.”

They shook hands, with each other, both with serious faces that told the other that they were going to win, or at least not go down without a fight. Pidge was feeling confident. She had 67% chance of choosing someone that that she would be able to easily pick a gift for, and she had done better with worse chances. 

Allura wrote down the names, shook the bag, and smirked as Pidge brought out the folded bit of paper. She read the name, blinked in surprise before realising that her math, for once, was wrong. 

_ Lance McClain _

She was doomed. 

* * *

 

“Matt, what do I do!” 

Her brother sighed from his deck, looking over at Pidge, who was hanging upside down on his bed, with the idea that, if all the blood rushed to her head, she would be getting an awesome idea that would make Lance agree that her gift (to him) was better than any gift than he could have gotten for anyone else. 

“I’m sure you’ll think of something, you always do,” Matt replied, going back to his work on the desk. Pidge let out a large sigh. 

“It’s not that I can’t think of something,” she moaned, “It’s that I can’t think of anything perfect! He would be happy with a photobook of his family, the latest game for his consol, hell, even a new christmas jumper would make him smile brightly and his eyes shine. But none of them are perfect!”

“Did you just say ‘eyes shine’?” Matt asked, looking back at her with a confused look on his face. Pidge frowned, before deciding that she had gotten too dizzy from being upside down and it was not going to help her with her ideas anymore. 

“Yeah? What about it?” she asked, her eyes squinting as she looked at her brother suspiciously. 

“What colour are his eyes?” Matt asked wearly. 

“A warm brown, like melted milk chocolate,” Pidge answered instantaneously. Matt let out a groan at her answer. “What? What’s wrong?”

“You don’t know what’s wrong?” Pidge shook her head, growing more guarded as Matt let out a short laugh, “Well, I won’t spoil it for you then.” 

“Why not!?” 

“Because you won’t believe me if I told you,” Matt said, a small smile growing on his face, “Now scat, i’ve got work to do and you telling me Lance’s McClain’s eye colour is not telling me the exact answer to the coefficient of friction.”

“You’re the one who wanted to know,” Pidge muttered as she climbed off his bed and left the room, closing the door loudly than slightly necessary on her way out. 

* * *

 

“Are you sure that this is a good thing to get Hunk?” Pidge sighed at Keith’s answer, who was closely inspecting a set of screwdrivers that Pidge had pointed out to him, before flipping the package over and reading the small print. 

“You mean, other than the fact that he moans at least twice a day about not having the right screwdrivers and explicitly telling me that, if his secret santa asked, he would like some screwdrivers, then no, I have no idea whether this would be a good idea for Hunk,” Pidge replied, the sarcasm dripping off her tongue like water over the end of a cliff: fast and deadly. 

“Okay, I get it, I’m overthinking things again,” Keith muttered as he placed the product into the basket. They walk in silence to the till until Pidge looks around the shop before letting out a sigh. 

“What should I get Lance?” she asked, causing Keith to whip his head around faster than the speed of light. She had initially not wanted to tell anyone in the group about her having Lance, but the days were going quickly and the end of term was a week and a half away. She had to get the perfect thing for him, and fast. 

“I don’t know, he doesn’t even like me,” Keith replied grumpily as they joined the long queue of christmas shoppers. 

“He does like you,” Pidge argued, “He admires you a lot, but you infuriate him as you don’t seem to study as much as he does to get the same grades,” Keith looked at her with wide eyes as they took another step forward, a couple having joined behind them in the queue. 

“Lance… Admires me?” Keith asked hesitantly. Pidge nodded.

“Yeah, he talks about you so much that, if he weren’t straight or you weren’t so invested in Hunk, and yes everyone knows about that, people would think he had a crush on you or something,” Pidge said with a laugh, but Keith kept frowning, looking into the back of the person in front of them. 

“He talks about you a lot too, almost too much sometimes,” Keith muttered, and than it was Pidge’s turn to look at him with wide eyes. 

“Really?”

“Yeah, he’s always talking about how soft your hair looks or how hardworking you are or how nice your clothes are even though you wear the same three things,” Keith replied, before looking down at his friend. “He easily talks about you more than he will ever talk about me.”

“Oh.” 

And with that, they fall into a respectable silence as Keith paid for Hunk’s gift and they left the store to go to another one, hopefully to find something for Lane that would be perfect. 

Spoiler alert: They did not find one. They left the mall five hours after they arrived, only after Keith threatened to use his knife collection on her dead body to the point that the police would never be able to identify her body. 

She still had no idea what to get Lance for Christmas, even without the impeding due date approaching faster than she would like. 

* * *

 

She was getting desperate, she knew this.

The light of the laptop was beginning to hurt her eyes due to how long she had been on it, diving through the web to come up with a good idea for Lance. Except, there didn’t seem to be a site that catered for competitive present buying (which made sense since it’s a very conditional subject), meaning that Pidge had been scrolling through many websites for gift ideas, not that any of them helped. 

All the advice seemed to be the same. Socks (nope), chocolate (she could do something better than that), or gifts that would only get someone if you had been dating for some time, so there was no way that she was going to be able to give any of those. 

She had talked to Hunk, who couldn’t offer her any advice on what to get him because Lance had been very tight lipped about the whole thing, refusing to tell anyone what he wanted from his secret santa other than a ‘surprise’, which was no help at all. 

Hunk had asked what she wanted, and she had just texted back ‘to win’ and left it at that. He didn’t say anything back. 

Which left her at this, scrolling through the web, the worry of losing this bet and not even getting Lance anything in time for Christmas causing her to feel sick to her stomach. She was almost about to give up for the night when her phone pinged, and a quick look at her notifications showed that she got a message from Veronica. 

While she knew of Veronica (because Lance never shuts up about his family, always bring them up into conversations and praising them like the proud middle brother that he was), she didn’t know her, and she had certainly never had a conversation with her that lasted longer than a greeting. 

_ Hey! Can I ask you a quick question?  _

Pidge frowned at the message, before picking up her phone and texting back a conformation. 

_ Is it true that you dared Lance to not to flirt with girls for the rest of the year? _

Pidge smiled at the text, letting out a small laugh as she started writing her reply. 

_ Yh, he’s truly a man of his word.  _

It was something that she dared him back in October, during their Halloween party. They had all been at least little tipsy (their group’s definitions of tipsy where a bit skewed if she was going to be honest), and Lance was firmly in his Zone, going around to everyone, smiling and joking and having a great time. However, every time he went over to a girl, striking the same pose, his smile going soft and his eyes shining bright in the harsh lighting, Pidge got an unidentifiable feeling in her chest, low and heavy, and she knew that she needed to do something about it. 

So, she had walked over to him, more liked stomped, and asked if he wanted to take up a challenge. He had said yes. She told him that he couldn’t flirt until the end of the year. He had looked directly into her eyes and said yes again, the upturn of his smile growing higher in her presence, and the harsh cold feeling in her chest gave away to the soft warm feeling in her stomach, and she had smiled at him, aking another sip of her drink. 

Her phone pinged again, and the next message made her frown slightly as she moved from her desk to her bed, keeping the laptop open despite it going into standby, the screen going black. 

_ Wow, you must be something than, he would have never agreed to that otherwise.  _

It was then that her breath was caught in her throat, and she wondered  _ why _ Veronica was messaging her, because they weren’t friends, they didn’t have anything in common other than Lance being major parts of their life. 

_ Why are you messaging me? _

The text was blunt, and she winced at the wording. Even she could have worded that better. The next message from her took a few minutes to come through. 

_ Lance talks about you a lot, you know?  _

Pidge doesn’t know how to reply, but luckily Veronica wasn’t done yet. 

_ Everyone in our house knows who you are, which is an achievement. I’ve never seen him so happy to talk about one person before, and he gets this look on his face that I’ve never seen before.  _

_ So you better not hurt my little brother. Consider this your shovel talk.  _

‘Shovel talk’? Why would she be be giving Pidge a shovel talk, it wasn’t like they were in a relationship or anything… 

Why would she think that they were in a relationship in the first place, she didn’t even like Lance like that! Their relationship was strictly platonic, and she told Veronica so. 

_ You’re a smart girl. You’ll figure it out.  _

Pidge didn’t know how to respond to that, so she didn’t, and instead she raced back to her computer, turning it on and opening up a new tab, searching for signs of having a crush, how to tell if someone else has a crush on you, how to do about crushes, and the answers threw her for a second. 

Huh. Apparently it wasn’t normal to know people’s eye colour off the top of their head. Who knew? 

However, this wasn’t to say that it was a bad thing. In fact, Pidge could use this.

Lance wanted a surprise for Christmas? Fine. But it was going to be the best surprise that he was ever going to forget, and that was a promise. 

* * *

 

To say that Pidge was nervous was an understatement. 

The thing was, Pidge didn’t get nervous, so when she walked into school for their final day, her hands sweaty and clutched around her bag. She had turned up at last moment to avoid Lance for an extra couple of hours, so by the time lunch came around and she was able to talk towards their normal sitting area, she felt sick, and the traitorous thought of giving up entered her head, but she was able to push it out quickly. 

She was a Holt, and a Holt never backs down from a challenge. 

So she smiled as she pulled the present from her bag, nicely wrapped with help from her mum, neatly tied with a bow. 

Lance walked over to the same with the same confident smile that pidge was familiar with, one that showed that he was going to get exactly what he wanted, which made the nerves in Pidge’s stomach flutter, but the small blush on his perfect skin made her feel better about everything. 

This was going to work. She hadn’t messed up the math again, not about something this important. 

“Hey there Pidgeotto,” Lance said, “Are you ready for this then?” Pidge let a smile of her own appear on her face. 

“Did you want to go first, or me?” Pidge asked, and Lance blinked for a second, before looking away with a small smile. 

“You can go first,” he muttered, before coughing and regaining his composure, “So who is your giftee then?” Pige smiled as she stood up and walked over to Lance, standing in front of the sitting boy and ignoring all the muttering that the group was making, and handing her gift to him. 

“You are,” she said softly as Lance looked at her like a deer in headlights, throwing a look at Allura (who was smirking too much, meaning that something was going her way, which made sense now that Pidge looked back on everything), before taking Pidge’s offered gift and slowly unwrapping it. 

He placed the paper on the table, and frowning at what Pidge had given him, before looking up. 

“Is this a mistletoe headband?” Lance asked, and Pidge nodded with a smile, butterflies growing as he put it onto his head, the mistletoe hanging in front of him via the spring that attached the fake plant to the headband. His forehead was revealed from the way that the headband had been put on, his hair pushed back and spiking up behind the headband. 

“I thought you don’t like Christmasy things like this,” Lance muttered as he rearranged it on his head, and Pidge smiled as she went to help him, her hand brushing his slightly, before he pulled them away suddenly to let her take the lead. 

“I normally don’t, but I know you do,” Pidge said as she finished sorting the headband out, before leaning forward and looking up at the plant. “Oh, look, there’s mistletoe above us,” she almost whispered, looking into Lance’s wide eyes, taking in the beautiful brown colour of them before leaning forward and placing her lips onto his. 

It was nothing major, barely a brush of each other’s lips for a couple seconds before she pulled back, but she didn’t think that it was bad for her first kiss. It was certainly one that she will be remembering for the rest of her life for sure, because she had never seen Lance so surprised and speechless in her life. 

Mission success. 

“What that a surprise enough for you Lance McClain?” Pidge asked, pulling Lance out of his stupor. 

“You are always filled with surprises Katie Holt,” Lance replied, before taking the headband off and placing it onto the table behind of him.

“Wow Pidge, I never thought you would be so bold,” Allura teased, causing Pidge to blush heavily when she remembered that the rest of their friend group was staring at them in various states of shock. 

“Hmm, it’s about time to be honest,” Adam muttered, playing with the back of Shiro’s hand, “I thought that you guys were going to dance around each other for the next couple of months at least.” 

“So who is your giftee McClain?” Pidge asked, completely ignoring her friends because they were horrible and mean for not telling her about her crush on Lance. New friends was definitely on the Christmas list this year. 

“You, actually,” Lance said shyly, something that Pidge wan’t used to, not that she was saying that Lance being shy about something was bad thing. Lance brought out a card with her name on, as well as a small wrapped gift. 

“Open the gift first, than the card,” Lance instrusted, and Pidge nodded, letting Lance hold the card while she opened the gift. She placed the paper on the table along with the other discarded paper, before smiling at the small bundle of hairbands in her hands.

“Ah, I’ve been needed some of these!” pidge squealed as she opened the packet and picked two out, putting the rest of them into her pocket before putting her hair up into two pigtails. Lance smiled at her as he handed over the card. 

_ Hey Pidge! _

_ Well, this is definitely not what I was thinking when I proposed this challenge to you a couple of weeks, but now that I think about it and after the conversations I’ve had with everyone, I don’t think I would change it for the world.  _

_ We’ve been friends for years now, which is a weird thought and a strange feeling, but not as strange as the feeling as the one that you’ve been giving me recently. I don’t know where they’ve come from, however, I do know that I don’t want them to go away. Sure, they sometimes make me feel sick, and it makes me sweat too much and say things that come out wrong, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. I might for someone else, but it’s you, and I cannot describe the things I would do for you, you only have to ask.  _

_ I wish you a Very Merry Christmas, and a Gloriously Happy New Year,  _

_ Lance  _

_ P.S. Congratulations on winning by the way, because we both knew there was no way that I  wouldn’t be able to let you let you would lose.  _

The smile didn’t leave Pidge’s face for the rest of the day, nor did Lance’s hand leave hers. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I know I haven't been active lately but I've got quite a few things planned for the new year, so watch out for that!
> 
> Like always, please leave kudos and reviews, and have a look for me on my tumblr Skiewrites and come and talk!


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